


Happy to be here

by magpie_03



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Ableism, Autism Spectrum, Autistic Josh Dun, Brendon Urie has ADHD, Canon Autistic Character, Depressed Tyler Joseph, Depression, Disability, Epilepsy, Explicit Language, Hospitalization, Josh Dun & Tyler Joseph Friendship, Loneliness, M/M, Psychosis, Sassy Brendon Urie, Self-Harm, Social Anxiety, Song Lyrics, Suicidal Thoughts, Support Group, Trauma, Trigger Warnings, joshler - Freeform, psychiatric ward
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23000035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_03/pseuds/magpie_03
Summary: Hi everyone,I'm back with a new story. This one is about Tyler and Josh who meet at a support group for teens/young adults with chronic illnesses/disabilities. Tyler has refractory epilepsy and psychosis, Josh is autistic. Both are struggling to find their place in the world.I've been unwell over the past couple of months and am slowly recovering. Writing is a huge part of surviving my own head so I just wanted to put this to bed here. This story has trigger warnings for suicidal thoughts, self-harm and ableist language.Stay safe and healthy, everybody!
Relationships: Josh Dun/Tyler Joseph, Josh Dun/Tyler Joseph/Brendon Urie
Comments: 40
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

"Tyler, can't you at least make an effort?"

Tyler shrugs, not bothering to turn around. He can practically hear his mom's insistence to wear something sensible. Jeans. A shirt. But muscles that ache from seizing and bones not even a dog would gnaw on, the whole the weight of his dirt poor health, these are best hidden. In hoodies and sweatpants. Under bed sheets and covers. Materials that make it hard to see that you've got a body at all. Materials make you look the way you feel: like a ghost. Like a nobody. Finally free from the shakles of your broken body, your broken brain.

He'll start to dress properly once he starts to feel like a real person again. A human being. With a life worth living, a story worth telling. Not a patient, not a medical issue, not a list of diagnoses that make his family drive the country up and down for second opinions (and third and fourth and fifth). Not just a list of diagnoses that makes neurologists frown and nurses smile a smile that's devoid of affection and full of pity. Not just a list of diagnoses that makes social workers scratch their eyebrow and therapists puff their cheeks and exhale slowly. _Oooooo-kay. Let's start from the beginning._

Let's start from the beginning. 

Diagnoses that involves medications and side-effects and drugs for the side-effects and drugs for those, too, until you become flatter than a sheet of paper. You felt human before, full of life, memories, but now you're just a by-product of the pharmaceutical industry, brutalized by the medical system and then spit out because your condition is intractable. Which means that Tyler, by the standards of modern medicine, may or may not exist at all.

He's not a person anymore. He's a patient with an ID number he knows by heart, he's refractory temporal lobe epilepsy and psychotic disorder: not otherwise specified (NOS). He's pretty sure his parents wouldn't have chosen that for his birth certificate. Utter these words at a party and watch your friends ghost away, one by one. _Sorry, Tyler, I'm busy. Maybe next time._ Except next time never comes, it never comes, it's only you now, you're waiting, forever waiting for someone to call back while ghosts are whispering in the dark.

_Have you heard what happened to Tyler. So sad. And scary. I knew him from school, we hung out a lot after basketball practice. He seemed so normal. And now he's locked up in the loony bin. Yeah, I heard he's hearing voices. Really? I heard he tried to kill himself. My mom said she heard it from someone who knows his family. Isn't he epileptic too? Poor guy. That's no life. I’d kill myself too if I were him._

Speak them at a family gathering and you'll hear every adult conversations turn into dead silence, just like on the radio, dead air, it sucks the life out of you, it transforms people you once knew into strangers. They're strangers now, them and their fear to face you while you're sitting on the couch next to them, glossy-eyed, drugged up to your eyeballs, no longer part of the adult world even though you're still the eldest. You were supposed to be a better brother, a better son.

_Why isn't Tyler at school? Didn't he get a scholarship to play basketball? Such a wasted opportunity, that one._

Thoughts like bees. Something you could capture with the aid of a cusp and an index card if it were stuck between the blinds. But these thoughts aren’t stuck between blinds or your teeth, they're stuck inside your mind, up and down they go, up and down, where cusps don’t reach. They throw themselves around, desperate to escape, only to hear their own echo magnified ten times.

_Wasted_

_Wasted  
_

_Wasted_

Tyler tries his hardest to look normal and yet all he gets is pity, poorly disguised as sympathy.

No such thing as normalcy when you drool on your jeans. People look and then quickly look away. No matter how quickly you fumble for a tissue, no matter how hard you try to string together the words _it’s not me_ _it’s the medication they inject me with I can’t help it I can’t I’m so sorry_ people look away before you start to stutter. It takes a while to recover from the beating of your heart, the heat in your face.

_Wasted_

Whisper them at the supermarket and you'll turn an aisle into a canyon of pity and confusion. Mumble them at the hospital when you look at your recent doctor's letter as if you're reading a verdict. Yell them, like the nurse who forgot about medical confidentiality when she was looking for your file and didn't think about the long line of patients who were waiting right behind you. Feel those stares going through your body like a thousand blades piercing through your skin at once. Turn around and look at them, one by one, those who got freshly diagnosed, scared of epilepsy but still hopeful that they'll fall into the category of people who will become seizure-free. Hopeful that they won't become like _you_ , their eyes say. Like _him_ , their hands whisper, their eyes, they're whispering, it's like having a thousand bees in his ears and chest, _look at him, that guy over there, he's epileptic and psychotic, how awful, thank Godness I'm doing so well, I haven't had a seizure in three years._

Tyler knows, he's supposed to focus on something else, he's supposed to do his breathing exercises, _inhale to a count of_ _five_ _, exhale to a count of five, relax, relax,_ but he can't when everyone is looking at him, when everyone is talking and whispering and it's all about him, all about _that guy over there._

A canyon of pity, confusion, and smugness.

That guy, over there.

Look at them and feel them, their eyes, staring you up and down, their hostility and morbid curiosity directed at your body, shivering, goosebumps all over. You're always cold these days. You haven't eaten anything yet, the psych and seizure meds are hard on the stomach and you're hard on yourself. The way you're clutching the hem of your hoodie gives away anxiety and scars and they know it, their eyes linger on your hands, the bite marks his hoodie can't quite cover.

I heard he's epileptic and psychotic, how awful.

And awful it is, really fucking awful indeed, because what they're not seeing is that by this point, no one is counting the seizures, breakdowns, psychotic episodes, and hospital admissions anymore. Tyler can't count how many times he had to be picked up by an ambulance, either because he's had a status epilepticus (which he prefers, to be honest, because that means he'll be unconscious for the worst part) or because he’s having a psychotic episode in which he loses control in the most terrifying, horrifying way. It means losing his sense of self, his mind, and there's no way out, just pain, just screaming until his voice goes raw, banging his head, biting himself until he draws blood, until he sees a color he can understand, until he feels a pain he understands, until he feels safe again, real again.

But there's blue lights, always, someone will call them, strangers on the street, always, always, his parents, siblings, alone with their brother in the house, _it'll be a minute, we'll be right back_ , but that minute is enough for hands to come, hands dipped in blue, and Tyler's out again, running because they're coming to get him, sirents flashing silently, everything is dipped in shadows, black and blue, black and blue, until the colors grow tongues and start to lick at his brain, the walls of his skull are bent backwards and his thoughts are escaping, they're changing color, they're bleeding out, and Tyler can't feel himself at all, everything's escaping, time's moving too fast and not fast enough, his heart is beating backwards and black and blue is pulsing in his ears, he can't make sense of this, this or the hands that are dipped in blue, hands that are telling him that he's going to be okay, buddy, just calm down, calm down, and he wants to fight them, them and on their condescension but he can't, not really, not when there's dripping blue everywhere, and the sound of his own voice, cracking, breaking in places because his lungs hurt, because he's screaming in a language he doesn't understand, because he's speaking in tongues, he's bleeding colors, black and blue, and the sight of that terrifies him more than the sight of his parents crying silently, their faces flickering in shadows unknown to him.

Black and blue, black and blue.

And then nothing.

For the longest part.

He's been there before. Not feeling real, not feeling himself, for weeks on end. Hospital doors that won't open by themselves. Drinking black tea out of plastic cups that crinkle when you squeeze them. Pills that dissolve in your mouth like cotton wool.

Nothing here has edges, but that doesn't mean it's soft.

Frosted glass. Foggy mind. Misty-eyed.

Wearing shoes without laces. Hoodies without strings. You can't really walk when your shoes don't have laces but that doesn't matter. These floors aren't made for walking. This life isn't made for living.

Restraints are so much worse.

Your world reduced to four hospital walls and a hospital bed.

Sterile, clinical, bare.

Survival reduced to its bare minimum.

White sheets. White linoleum flooring.

Hospital white isn't a color, it's a feeling. It's a thousand white flags hissed simultaneously.

Tyler's pulse, a slow, faint metronome. His mind has ceased to form thoughts, he hit rock bottom again and the shock of the fall catapulted him here, inside a room full of hospital white.

Everything's white but his veins are all black, like tar. It slows everything down. His mind has ceased to form coherent thoughts. His tongue a useless slab of meat inside his mouth.

Memory, the texture of his mind, is disintegrating. The words are escaping him. Disintegrating, sedated, those are the words he should be having for this kind of experience but there are no words for this.

There's nothing, just hospital whiteness, and that's not a color.

This is nothing but a lesson in emptiness.

Living from one hour to the next. Time leaks through Tyler's brain like an IV drip. Squeaky nurses' shoes. They're peeking their heads in his room from time to time, their eyes moving over his body, over his left ankle (restrained), right ankle (restrained), hips/belly (restrained), left wrist (restrained, throbbing painfully), right wrist (restrained).

Nothing has edges here but that doesn't mean it's soft.

Nurses come with choices. Pills that dissolve in your mouth like cotton wool.

But you don't really have choices, not here, and when everything is taken away from you saying no is the only thing you have left, no no no, to pills, no no no, NO, but your voice doesn't make sense, are you really saying no or something else, hospital whiteness swallows everything, you're screaming no no no NO (shut up shut up SHUT UP) but that doesn't make the words real again, and the nurse whisper-yells _is he psychotic_ to her colleague and her voice travels through the room at a thousand miles an hour, it echoes like the rustling of a thousand trees all green against the grey sky

_Is he psychotic_   
_Is he psychotic_   
_Is he psychotic_   
_Is he psychotic_

The answer is a neddle, a pinch, and total indifference.

Total indifference. Technically, there should be someone by his bedside at all times but the acute wing of a psychiatric hospital is understaffed, again, and technically, Tyler isn't exactly a favorite with the nurses.

An emergency, who is it? Don't tell me it's Tyler Joseph again. The entire clinic is full. We don't have a bed. Tell them that. Well, great, we're overstretched too, but we've got to admit him, you know that, everyone knows that, that's why they keep ditching him back to us because no one wants someone like him as a patient and you know what, neither do I. Last time it took eight nurses to restrain him. Eight. Can you believe it. And have you heard what he did when -

Tyler, chronic epilepsy and psychosis, _a revolving door patient straight from the books_ , Tyler who's non-compliant with his medications and _God, just so annoying_ , Tyler, who's in pain, who's scared out of his mind, who doesn't understand what's going on, _call the attending, he's acting up again, he's going on and on about colors and the light and how everything changes its form when he squints his eyes. Yeah, he's completely out of his mind. Is the attending here? Good. Could you please take a look at the patient in room 21, Tyler Joseph, he's hallucinating and agitated. No, he's not accessible. He's refusing his meds again. He's on... let me check. Risperidone for his psychosis, Topiramate for the epilepsy and Trazodone for the depressive symptoms. Last time we added Haloperidol and Lorazepam. He won't take anything by mouth. I know. I know. We all do._

Tyler tries to open his mouth to make himself known but the human language hasn't found its way back into his body yet. Only birds noises, soft as the fluttering of wings against a window that is locked from the inside.

When he turns his head to the right he can see a speck of sky, shining on, indifferently, almost cruelly so. The world doesn't care that Tyler Joseph is dehydrated.

Psychiatrists who frown just like neurologists do once they've got his chart in their hands. Puzzled worry, distanced concern.

We'll continue treatment with Lorazepam and Haloperidol for the time being. No, he'll stay in restraints for the night. With his history I don't want to take any risks.

A smile that's a bit too broad for a doctor whose patient can't do anything, not even wiggle their toes.

We're here to make sure you're not going to hurt yourself again, okay, Taylor?

I'm Tyler, Tyler wanted to retort. So many admissions and you still don't know my name. 

But nothing comes out, just bird-language, brittle-boned, and the psychiatrist nods his head as if to say _good work everybody_ , and leaves. His shoes don't even squeak, he just vanishes, him and the power to decide who gets to walk around to stretch their limbs, who gets to get up from this bed to take a breath, a long one, with your eyes closed, smiling to yourself, just like normal people do.

Hospital-white, a lesson in emptiness, and it's another two hours until a nurse comes to finally check on him, a nurse with hands that are soft and not-blue, a nurse who knows how to read his fluttering eyelids, the crack in his voice without labelling him as _agitated_ and _oppositional_. A nurse who doesn't roll her eyes when Tyler chokes on the awful hospital water and his own spit because you can't drink that well when you're restrained to a bed and so thirsty you feel like your eyeballs might pop out of your skull at any moment, a nurse whose sour breath isn't all in our face, too much shitty coffee from the vending machine to survive yet another night shift, a nurse who waits patiently, beside him, bringing a plastic up to his lips, sip after sip after sip until he's done and turns his head. _No more thank you._

But those people waiting in line at the epilepsy clinic don't see that. They don't see the nightmares that are haunting Tyler, the flashbacks which come back right in the moment he sees a patient strapped to a gurney. All they see is someone whose body folds onto himself, someone who presses one hand to his ear and bites the other as he's rocking back and forth, a bird desperate to escape its cage of a body. 

...

A bird desperate to escape its cage of a body because there are memories that feel like someone is peeling the flesh off of your skull. The TV wasn't working. There was no channel on, the screen was pitch black, just the radio station. Tyler spent hours staring at the black screen listening to songs whose melodies he couldn't remember so well now that his mind was clouded with chemicals that felt foreign to his body. He wasn't even sure if the radio channel was on or if his mind was playing tricks on him again. _Auditory hallucinations_ is what he should have been thinking, but that word smacks of seizure, smacks of fear, smacks of a brain he doesn’t understand at all. _Is there music coming out of the television_ he kept asking the staff, _is there music coming out of the television_ _I need to know I need to know_ but the nurses just kept smiled their nondescript standard smile while making notes about his behavior. 

Patient is agitated. Shows preoccupation with the television. Experiences acoustic hallucinations. No response to medication yet.

 _Is there music coming out of the television_ but no one bothered to tell Tyler that the new student nurse turned up the radio at the nurses' station.

...

  
"Tyler, are you with me?"

Tyler looks up. His mom, her hands on her hips. Lips pressed together, resolute expression on her face. He knows the expression, he knows she can raise her voice to fight with basically anyone, with neurologists about the dire prognosis of his epilepsy diagnosis versus their commitment to _do no harm and help my son_. With psychiatrists about involuntary psychiatric holds, court orders, and anti-psychotics. With social workers about the lack of a working support system for young adults with chronic and severe neurological and psychiatric illnesses _because they're sending us home with hardly any support in place, I can't believe it, because that's the way it's going to be from now, one hospitalization after another and all the doctors are doing is to increase the meds while we're left to pick up the pieces_. With pharmacists about the delivery of Tyler's meds and _why it's taken so long, we're almost out of meds again and my son needs these medications to stay alive, do you hear me_. With therapists who flat out refuse to treat Tyler because he's got epilepsy written on his chart. With physiotherapists who sneer at Tyler's body, a battle ground littered with scars and bite wounds.

Making an effort. Going out, meeting people. Making a good first impression. Not exactly his speciality. With his slurred speech he sounds like a book whose pages are torn and missing. And who would want to read that. He's stumbling along, a mind that can't carry the weight of its thoughts anymore. And then there's the rest. There's _that guy over there_ , there's ghosts whispering in the dark, there's wearing skeleton hoodies because bones are so much preferable to a softness that has no edges, there's former friends from school parading around in their button down shirts and SUVs, former friends who wear their accomplishments like a shield while all Tyler thinks about is making a noose so he can dangle in the yard for everyone to see.

There's pauses in conversations that hurt more than waiting for people to call.

_And Tyler, where have you been. Hospital. Oh. That sucks._

Tyler hides his hands deep inside the sleeves of his hoodie and shrugs his shoulders. He'd rather stay in bed, hide inside his hoodie, inside his own invisibility, his own insecurities. Invisibility, insecurity, he hasn't tried these words yet, he hasn't yet made a noose out of them yet. They look like they will hold the weight of his mind. But he can't say that out loud, can he. He's got to be careful with his thoughts and where they travel.

He's got to be careful.

"You're not going back to bed. You're going to get dressed and then I'm driving you to group. This will be good for you. I know you enjoy Brendon and the group. You need to get out more."

Tyler stares at his bare feet. He doesn't even have socks on. He's barefoot. Baresouled.

"Tyler. Are you listening to me?"

Tyler's eyes rest on his feet. He wiggles his toes. His hands shoot up to play with the strings of his hoodie but they're gone. Did his parents get an order to remove the strings and laces from all his clothing?

"My soul escaped through my feet, it fell right through my toes. It lives under the floorboards. It's safe there. All black, no blue."

  
...

"You know, I made the cookies you and Brendon prefer. I'm sure group will be fun."

Half an hour later. The tiredness in his mom's voice is tangible, and it gives way to something else. Fear, fear that this is the beginning of another episode, fear that the Risperidone isn't working because Tyler's fighting it, inside, nail and tooth, the fog the drug brings, because losing himself is preferable to being numb to the point of no return. He hates Risperidone with all his heart, the fogginess, the sleepiness, the hospital whiteness. Drooling out of the corners of his mouth. Not exactly a great conversation starter.

Tyler has heard his parents' whisper-yelled conversations, late at night, when he's supposed to be asleep but isn't. Instead, he's up, counting pills the way other people count sheep. Everytime he's gone to his darkest place, his darkest hour, a new pill is added to the mix. No one has asked how he's doing. How he's feeling.

Medical issue doesn't have feelings. Instead he's got issues. He's a patient now, a client, a mental health service user, but no matter how glossy the terms, how medical, how clinical, they are never enough to sugar-coat the shitty reality that follows. Pills for his epilepsy. An injection for the worst bit of his mind, in his butt, alternate sides, every two weeks. Tyler has been through enough hospital stays, he thought he'd lost the ability to feel embarrassed or ashamed in a clinical setting but his body is proving him wrong everytime a new nurse is present.

He cherishes nurses who retain the capacity for smalltalk even though he rarely speaks during injection time. Having a nurse disinfect a part of your butt cheek for injection isn't a great place to have a conversation, really, not even for small talk. Some nurses are insinsent, though, and Tyler is grateful, because their voices keep him grounded through the smell of disinfectant, through the pain as the needle goes in. Their voices occupy the room, they're cheery, trained to be, but Tyler still bites his lips to force himself not to wince when the needle goes in. The ringing in his ears tastes like blood.

_How are you doing, Tyler_

_You're looking pale and tired today_

_Are you sleeping okay?_

_Okay, sharp scratch_

_All done!_

Blood tests. Drug interactions. Bruises on his arms because the nurse who's responsible for drawing blood never finds a good vein. He's new, Tyler can tell, and nervous. Some kind of junior doctor, Tyler forgot the name, here on rotation to complete his degree to become a real doctor. He's not even a medical junior doctor yet, turns out, he's a vet, _really, I want to become a veterinarian but they put me here is_ what he blurts out as soon as he sees his arms, _they put me here because I worked as a nurse once._ Tyler's arms get people talking or they stay silent.

Pick or choose.

 _I was healthy once_ Tyler wanted to respond but he only managed to wince when the nurse-turned-vet poked the needle into his arm and the vein started to roll immediately. Raised eyebrows behind a facemask. The same old assumption.

 _I was healthy once_

The nurse-soon-to-be-vet refuses to look him in the face as he dismisses him after three tries and a handful of tubes of blood the color of crimson.

_I was somebody once_

Blue-purple-green, pulsing underneath his skin

Ghosts whispering in the dark or maybe just in the living room next door.

"I don't want Tyler on such a high dose of Risperidone. Such a powerful drug. He's on, what now? Three different drugs, four if you count the diazepam, and no one knows whether they're working or not. This is only convenient for the doctors because it keeps Tyler out of the hospital but at what cost? Sedate him so he can barely walk or talk? I feel like I'm losing my son."

"Honey, you heard the doctor, it's the best option to keep Tyler stabilized for now. We need to think about our family, too. We need to follow Tyler's treatment plan, take him to the hospital for his depot injections and make sure that he's compliant with his anticonvulsant and his antidepressant treatment. That way we'll know that he's on his meds, that he's stable."

"I'm really not okay with this. Especially not with such a high dose of Risperidone."

"Well, do you have a better idea? Should we put Tyler back on Quetiapine? Paliperidone? Lithium? Change his seizure meds, too? Go back to Topiramate and Lacosamide? Add Brivaracetam because by this point who's counting the side effects, right? Or should we quit the antipschotics and watch our son try to hang himself in our backyard again?

Tyler sinks his teeth deep into his hand, he's closing his eyes to shield himself from the pain in his dad's voice but he can hear the trembling, the way it cracks and breaks in places just like his own voice does. 

"Or watch Tyler get picked off of bridges by the police? Remember the last time when he wandered on the highway... and the police said...they...caught him... just in time?"

Tyler's biting down hard, he's drawing blood, but he can't draw it out, the colors, the memory of pain, ingrained into his bones.

_Wasted, wasted, wasted._

"I-I'm sorry, I just, I-"

"Come here. I know. I know. I'm worried, too."

"I just want Tyler to be safe again. And healthy. Gosh, it's been years, Chris, _years...._ "

"I know, I know..."

"I just don't think forced treatment is the answer. And I don't think that drug is safe. Just look at our son."

"I know but Tyler has a court order, there's nothing we can-"

"I know what Tyler has. I still think he needs a meds review once and for all. Maybe all of this is connected to the epilepsy drugs he's been taking. I can't even remember the name of the drugs, it's been so many. And his seizures. The doctors still don't know what is causing what. All they're saying is that the combination of temporal lobe epilepsy and psychosis isn't unheard of but they still can't tell us where this is coming from or when any of this is getting better. I can't believe they're sending us home like this. Yet another psychotic episode and no support, again, just more meds. And a treatment order. I'll address this during his next appointment at the clinic. We're not done here."

"That's a great idea, honey, I really do."

"Chris!"

"Yes?"

"I think I heard something upstairs. Do you think...?"

"TYLER!"

His soul lives under the floorboards, together with the pills Tyler refused to take. They add up, his worries, tears, and the pharmaceuticals, and it's only at night that Tyler reaches underneath there, between the cracks, to fill the fissures of what's broken, of what's missing. 

"Tyler, are you even listening to me?"

"... what?"

"That's what I mean. You're so distracted today. I asked if you heard from Brendon."

Tyler shrugs. His mom is way too insistent about this group. The despair of the lonely. She wants him to have friends, like he used to, she wants him to be popular, like he used to, like his siblings are, but he isn't Tyler the kid who plays basketball anymore. He's Tyler _the crazy epileptic from down the street_ , he's Tyler who's crying and screaming all night, rolled up in his bed like a wounded animal, banging his head against the wall until his parents come in, all despair and pale, pale faces, _shhh, shhh, it's okay, it's okay_ , he's Tyler who's up all night singing and screaming away on his piano, in the basement at night, with the windows open until the neighbors complain. _Jesus Christ Kelly, you need to control your son. Normal people are trying to sleep here_.

Crazy, epileptic, not normal. He isn't sure which is preferable. None of these labels have translated into lasting friendships. Only ghosts who disappear, one by one.

Brendon and the group. He wasn't even the one who came up with it. His mom did. A support group for chronically ill and disabled teenagers and young adults. Monthly meetings at a local chapel. The group is an improvement to the other groups his mom sent him to as they're trying to get him on a waiting list for a therapist. Art therapy with blunt scissors. Meditation classes with whale songs. That was by far the worst, how is he supposed to relax when he's forced to listen to a record that sounds as if someone is wailing in pain. Morning yoga classes with women that complain about childcare and bad hips and their karma until Tyler enters the room.

That and the meetings with his social worker who was supposed to support him through all of this. Still is, technically.

Tyler remembers the meeting after his last prolonged hospital stay when his support system was put in place, using a mental health care system that is overstretched, underfunded and basically non-existent. Weekly visits by a social worker to help Tyler with being Tyler, really. Making sure he's taking his medications, making sure he's doing okay and his family is, too. _We all want to make sure that Tyler is getting the best care possible_ is what the psychiatrist said. The social worker nodded, adding something about _reintegrating Tyler into the community_. His parents look at each other.

There's a silence that hurts more than a thousand words.

...

The social worker says _okey dokey_ a lot and carries his keys on a chain attached to his jeans. He tells Tyler _it's a beautiful day to go outsid_ e in the same tone than _keep your hands away from your mouth_ and _no biting_.

 _We need to focus on Tyler's social functioning_ is how the psychiatrist introduced the idea. _We need to focus on_ _regaining lost functioning_. Neither Tyler or his parents know what that means or what a social worker is supposed to do about that. But that's how Tyler ended up in an office with flickering fluorescent lights, cushioned chairs and cups that say RETHINKING MENTAL ILLNESS. The social worker put a poster up, too. Not nicely framed, like the photograph of his kids on his desk. This one is for his clients, the service users. The crazies. It’s blu-tacked to the wall and hangs right next to a plant with sickly looking leaves. One of its edges is coming off.

_Happiness isn’t the way, it’s the destination._

Happiness, peeling slightly at the corner. 

...

Waiting at the local epilepsy clinic because Tyler's epilepsy nurse needs to write a letter detailing how bad his epilepsy really is for his disability benefits application. _With the severity of your conditions I don't see any problems but we need to be on the safe side_ is what his neurologist and psychiatrist agreed on. Even when your life is going to shit you need to be on the safe side. Just fill out this form and take a seat.

Tyler overhears a conversation between two middle-aged women waiting along with him. Patients, judging by the looks they're giving patients who are seen before them even though _they_ have been waiting for over an hour now.

"I swear money falls off of you in this city. If I was on disability I’d shoot myself in the head."

The epilepsy nurse lets him in. This is a different office. The cups all carry long, complicated names of antiepileptics that aren't working for Tyler.

It feels like home, in a way. Feels like failure.

The nurse is smiling, a genuine smile. She hasn't seen Tyler in quite a while. She isn't familiar with his case.

Hello, Tyler. It's good to see you. How can I help you today? 

_I am interested in putting my fingers to my head_

...

Tyler has survived the long silence. Those mornings when it’s difficult to get out of bed, when the house is terrifying and empty, when everyone is at school or work except you because the only job that you have is to be sick in your head and that job comes neither with a vacation nor with a salary.

Those mornings when you can feel every inch of your body in all its strange, throbbing weirdness. Almost as if entering a café on your own, it’s loud, terrifyingly so, chatter and clatter all around you, all the seats are taken. Except this isn’t a cafe. This is your home, and the only noise around you is the constant screaming of your mind. This is your home and the seats are empty and still taken.

Tyler tries to remember the posters his psychiatrist put up. _It's okay not to be okay_ is what they are screaming from the walls in thick, black and white font. _Feeling stressed or depressed? You're not alone._

 _You are not alone, you are not alone, you are not alone_ , but Tyler buries his face inside his hands and listens to the echo of his heartbeat beating backwards at the speed of light. _You are not alone are you are you are you are you alone alone alone alone?_

Tyler spends countless hours staring at the helium ballon in the corner of his room. A balloon in the form of a house, complete with a little chimney at the side, a tiny home hugging the ceiling of his actual home. His parents got it for him, or one of his siblings, he can't remember, after his last prolonged hospital stay, seven months on the psych ward. His parents and siblings met him at the hospital gates with a balloon, the way people people meet you at airports after a long holiday. Tyler squinted his eyes at the words and the normal world, ready to swallow him whole. _Home sweet home._

The ballon has been losing air. Going at this rate it'll die, here in this room where Tyler was born.

 _Home sweet home_.

Tyler still doesn't have words for it. His parents doesn't have them, either, but at this point they are desperate enough to do anything to get their out of the house again, just for one day, for a few hours, and a support group seems a good enough opportunity. Or an idea, really, a word that doesn't terrify you endlessly. 

"Look, I saw this flyer at the hospital," his mom mentioned, trying too hard to be nonchalant, "this sounds like a great opportunity to go out and meet new people. In fact, I called the person who's running the group, someone called Brendon, and he said they're open to new members and you're free to drop by anytime. The next meeting is tomorrow. Do you want to give it a try?

That's how it started.

Which is cool, Tyler's cool with it, it took a long time but he can say it, to himself, mumble it, whisper it, underneath his breath, a second voice in a mouth filled with cobwebs and spiders. He's whispering to himself when no one else can see. When no one else can hear. He's speaking in tongues to a sky that remains forever empty, indifferent to the tremenduous amount of suffering your own head can bring.

But he's fine with it, he really is. Attending the group once a month is what tells him that he's back in the real world again, back in a world when his hoodies have strings and his shoes have laces and having to figure out the world after a psychotic episode, after a prolonged seizure, after having lost yourself, becomes a little less disorienting. A less less painful. 

A little less lonely.

Let's start from the beginning.

"Just say disabled, it's not a bad word," is how Brendon greeted him with a wide smile when they first met. Tyler's mom spent five whole minutes trying to explain Tyler's “complex needs" and failing, as always. Tyler couldn't look Brendon in the eye, afraid he'll scare him off with his complex needs and issues and epilepsy and psychosis and _stop rocking back and forth, just stop it, can't control it, can't control it, hospital, hospital, fear fear fear_

But Brendon invited them in with a wide smile anyway, Brendon, who's loud, rambunctious, wild, Brendon, who's unapologetically himself, always, who's bouncing off the walls so much that Tyler mistook him for being bipolar and having a manic episode. "No man, just a case of unmedicated ADHD. I've been on meds and it freaked me out, I had no control over my body anymore. So I went off the pills and that's when I realized I can still be myself and that's okay. I'm not weird. I'm just different. I jump around. Jump around. Jump around. Get up get up and get down...."

And off he went, singing House of Pain lyrics and rearranging plastic chairs into a circle. Tyler remembers standing there and holding the thought for the first time. Holding it like you're holding sand in your hands, grabing it, trying to hold on, not wanting to let go of this drop of life, a glimmer, a glimpse.

That's when he learnt, when he felt for the first time that you're still a person, not just a diagnosis. That you can have a diagnosis but the diagnosis doesn't have you, at least not always. Not here, in this room, for these couple of hours.

A drop of life, a glimmer, a glimpse

_Not weird_

_Just different_

_That's okay_

All those syllables, they went through Tyler's fingers, through his mind, faster and faster, he couldn't process it, any of it, and before he felt the aura coming on, before he felt the seizure coming on he felt something else, something different, something he hasn't allowed himself to feel in a long time.

_You're not alone_

Tyler stands in doorway, staring at the plastic folding chairs, all arranged carefully into a circle, as always. The memory of his first seizure doesn't haunt him, not here. What comes back, again and again is how Brendon stayed with him, right there and then. How his mom explained what to do - it was a focal seizure with impaired consciousness, the seizure Tyler hates the most because he's conscious, dimly so, but unable to react - and Brendon stayed with him, reassuring him, along with his mom. “You're going to be okay, Tyler. Just, breathe, we're going to get through this, okay?"

_Okay_

_You're going to be okay_

"Tyler? I'll pick you up at 6, just wait for me here in the parking lot, okay?"

_Okay_

_Okay_

_You're going to be okay_

The chapel's windows transform shadows in colors and it's like loking into a kaleidoscope everytime Tyler enterns the room and he can feel himself relaxing, instantly, his eyes no longer scanning the room for the nearest exit, his fingernails no longer deep inside his palms. Each color adds another surface until it's impossible to decipher, until the memory becomes real again, because it's only in this place that he allows himself to feel okay.

Tyler drops the cookies off - carefully wrapped in napkins and packed in a tupperware container. They'll disappear quickly, they're Brendon's favorite - and folds himself on a chair. So far no one noticed he's here. [Deep breath.] Brendon, who' standing with his back to him, is talking to a woman who looks like someone's else's mom, judging by her concerned look and the tupperware of cookies she brought. And there's - oh. Someone new.

Right across from him. Tyler takes a quick look, scared to draw attention to himself. They don't get many new members here. Black skinny jeans, a black hoodie (with strings), new, judging by the looks of it, a grey beanie, a shock of pink hair, and a pair of black noise-cancelling headphones. New guy seems to be absorbed in something, he's rocking back and forth slightly, his head turned to the side, mouthing words only he can understand. He's probably listening to something on his killer headphones.

Well, at least someone made an effort. Tyler bends down to pretend to re-tie his shoes, too embarrassed to say or do anything. It doesn't help that he's still wearing his sweatpants he slept in and the bones on his hoodie have seen better days, too. New guy better not say a word. He's not great with social situations, never been, and just the thought of having to say hello is making his heart race.

New guy is shifting in his seat, he's starting to hum, and it doesn't help that he's got a really nice, soft singing voice. Tyler can feel his face go beet red. His throat is still dry from another night of attempting to record songs in the basement until the neighbors intervened, again. He never felt so useless, so inapt. Not even at a support group for other sick kids can he talk to anybody.

 _You're worthless, nothing, nothing, nothing, sitting here drooling you disgusting little_ -

 _Focus, focus focus_ , but all he can think about is his shoe laces, all tied up and knotted, and the things he could do with it, _you can really hurt yourself with these if you want to_ a psychiatric nurse once told them, but this is the real world, this is the world where people wear laces without getting hurt, he doesn't have to be afraid of shoelaces or of himself anymore,

_focus focus focus_

"TYLER! Good to see you!"

Brendon is waving, greeting him with the widest smile, comfortably oblivious to the thoughts in Tyler's head but aware that Tyler doesn't like to be touched, a boundary that has been respected ever since Tyler started to attend the group.

"How is it going? I see you brought your mom's cookies!"

Tyler whispers _I'm doing great and how are you and thank you_ to the ground, too scared to make eye contact. He's fumbling with his laces because laces and knots and nooses are so much safer than this, the unknown of socializing, of the normal world. He begs for Brendon to talk to new guy or his mom, _just don't come to me, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone_

Scratching of a chair's legs on the ground. Brendon is sitting down, munching, talking about anything, cookies, concerts he went to, the weed he smoked, he's talking himself or Tyler, Tyler can't tell the difference, but as the minutes pass his knuckles regain color. His grip on his laces looses.

_Okay_

_Okay_

_You're going to be okay_

"Are you okay, Tyler?"

A genuine question. He can feel Brendon's eyes on him, concerned. Honest, like a friend. Something he hasn't allowed himself to feel in a long time.

_No pressure_

_No pressure  
_

Tyler breathes. In. out. In. out. He knows what he looks like. He knows what his pale face, shaky hands and the large bags under his eyes mean.

"I'm trying to be."

The words escaped his mouth before he really thought about them.

"That's good. It's really good to see you."

Tyler nods, his gaze hefted on Brendon's shoes. No knots, no nooses, not now, not now.

Words like glass marbles. Tyler can feel them in the back of his mind, moving around, whispering.

_Okay_

_Okay_

_You're going to be okay_

"I'm happy to be here."

  
...

"Alright, I think we should start. Welcome, introductions everyone!"

The room has filled up, the chairs are taken. Well, almost. Brendon is still sitting next to Tyler and the other chair to Tyler's right remains empty, as always. People are dragging more chairs in, everyone's rearranging, shuffling, moving about. People who are more than their diagnoses but Tyler can't place most of them, he's terrible with names and faces alike. He wonders what the others remember about him. Or if he's just that guy who's weaing his bones inside out, the guy who never has anyone sitting next to him except Brendon.

Off they go. Names, diagnoses, stories. It long stopped being frightening to see how familiar ICD-10 codes and diagnoses becoome once you've been ill long enough. ICD-10 codes. A gateway into a world he understands. The sick world. Depression. Anxiety. ADHD. Chronic Pain. The list goes on, but so does the stories. Their level of functioning isn't lost, that's what his psychiatrist would say. Stories about school, about graduation, college, jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends. Someone is getting married. A round of applause. Tyler hides his hands inside his hoodie. He's on the severe end of it all, diagnoses, illnesses, he knows it and the others know it too, and the panic is starting to set it. He doesn't have anything to offer, as a human being. As a person. No story to tell. Just more hospital admissions, more meds, more illness. Just as he's about to focus on his shoelaces again, on the nooses, his mind is starting to pick up on new guy's humming, something he finds oddly soothing. He wonders what his story is. He looks like he's all about music, with his headphones and humming and lowkey singing. He looks like he plays in a band.

Tyler doesn't look up when he introduces himself. The silence that befalls the room everytime it's his time to talk still tells him he's the only one with chronic epilepsy and psychosis. You learn to read other people’s silence when you’re holding on to all the things you cannot say. He's the only here with a brain like his, he doesn't have to ask. The way people stop shuffling, the way they lean forward, careful to catch the slightest detail, the way their eyes widen, it tells him everything.

Telling his story - the fragments he's been sharing - has stopped feeling uncomfortable. When he started to attend the group Tyler radiated lonelines, and the world reflected it right back at him through the raw reality of seeing everyone else around you live their lives while you're stuck in your room all day with the curtains shut. People stared at him with wide eyes and you knew it, you know what those eyes mean, you know that they're thinking. Tyler snapped at anyone who dared to look at him or ask him a question until Brendon turned towards him. _Dude, you've got to chill. We're not here to judge you._

Deep breaths. You're going to be okay.

"I'm Tyler. I have drug-resistant epilepsy and..."

Psychosis. Just say it. This is a safe space, Brendon said it. You won't scare anybody.

Don't, just don't, you know what people are like, they suck and leave, eventually, no one wants someone who's psychotic, who's batshit, you're disgusting, you

... mental health issues."

_Mental health issues. Now that's a euphemism_

_Liar liar liar_

Shut up shut SHUT UP

"And I'm still alive."

_You call this living?_

_Liar_

SHUT UP

He can feel Brendon giving him a look. "And we're very happy about that."

The others humm in agreement which comes close to a round of applause. No marriage this time, no college graduation, just someone fighting not to succumb to their fears. Tyler shrugs. Progress, you could say. A few months earlier he would have stomped out of the room, teeth buried already deep inside his hands because he couldn't process their kindness, he didn't have the language for it, he didn't have the words, he wasn't able to allow himself to feel kindness, the only thing he allowed himself was hurting until his hands became black and blue.

Now it's scars in the form of half moons. Bite wounds. His body isn't ready yet to offer him forgiveness with skin as graceful and pristine as a clean, white sheet. But there are no fresh wounds for today. No sad smiles, turned upside down. No yelling, no pills that dissolve inside your mouth and make your mind all foggy while your flesh is stitched back together one by one. His body isn't ready to offer him forgiveness. And he isn't ready to forgive yet, either, he isn't ready to forgive and forget but he isn't tearing himself apart in the process, not today, not for these couple of hours.

No laces, no knots, no nooses, not here, not now.

He's okay to exist, here.

Just okay.

"Tyler, are you done?"

Did he say these things out loud? No, he's been doing what his mom calls _brooding_ and his psychiatrist calls _poverty of speech_ but here he's allowed to be lost in thought, just like any other person.

Tyler nodds.

"Okay, who's next? Joshua? Do you want to tell the group a bit about yourself?"

Tyler looks up.

He can feel the nervous guy tensing up if that's even possible. New guy isn't nervous like Tyler's nervous. He doesn't turning his pain inwards. Instead, he's nervous with his whole body in a way Tyler has never seen before. He's twitching, flicking, rocking, and even his humming has changed, from a relaxed, low monotone to a much higher frequency, something that signals pain. Nervous guy isn't just nervous, he's scared out of his mind. 

Tyler is glaring at the others, daring them not to stare.

Brendon clears his throat. The minutes pass on, they drag on, and Tyler wants to shake nervous's guys mom who's talking to her son quietly. Why would you drag your son to a support group if it made him _that_ uncomfortable? Sure, during his first few visits he refused to talk at all and just sat there but this is different. This is pain.

Just as Brendon is about to get up nervous guy bends forwards and fumbles with something. He's getting an iPad out of his rucksack. Everyone stares, even Tyler can't help but look. He's curious as to what will happen next. The most excitement the group had was Tyler had a big seizure once and kicked the crucifix from the wall which showed a gigantic hole. Even churches are made of nothing but cement and air.

_Tap tap tap._

Nervous guy's hands are moving swiftly over the surface of the iPad. His fingernails aren't bitten to the curb but his hands look like they've done their fair sharing of smiling upside down. Tyler can see faded scars and a few cuts that don't look like they stem from cutting vegetables for dinner.

 _Hi - I'm - joshua_ , an automated voice reads from the iPad.

_But you can call me Josh._

Tyler makes a mental note. _Josh it is_.

Seconds pass. The computer voice cut through the silence like a knife through butter and Tyler can feel (and see) the others burn with curiosity, some sit on the edges of their seats, their eyes fixed on Josh who stares on the ground, headphones still on, iPad on his lap. Tyer shrugs. Maybe nervous guy (sorry, Josh), has a dysfunctional vocal chords and can't talk. Or he's got social anxiety. Or he isn't just the talking type. Tyler can relate. He's seen his hands. He's seen enough.

Brendon clears his throat.

"Okay, Josh, anything else?"

Tap tap tap.

_And I'm autistic._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter, this time focusing on Josh. Enjoy!

"I'm sure this will be exciting, Josh. Groups are fun!"

Said no autistic person ever. Josh doesn't dare to look at his mom, in the car, keys in her hand. He's fumbling with his headphones, shaking his head at the wild, vast unpredictability of it all. He doesn't want to let her down, doesn't want to ruin her excitement, her hopes with his anxiety, his fear, his autisticness.

He's always been a shitty liar.

He's always been himself.

He's always been autistic.

The anxiety had began this morning when he woke up to find a new, black hoodie on the pile of clothes he was supposed to wear for today, the pile he sorted through the day before, he went through it, again and again and again until the texture became memory, until memory felt _safe_.

Trying to stay safe in the the face of the vast, brutal incomprehensibility of the world.

Trying to stay alive.

Wearing something new wasn't part of the plan. It simply wasn't. There was already so much to process, so much think about, let alone worry about. His mom had printed a copy of the flyer she found online, _a support group for chronically ill and disabled teenagers and young adults_ , and the paper has been folded so many times the paper has become soft and crinkly, just like old skin. _Chronically ill and disabled_ , his fingers trace those words slowly, carefully, as if he's about to pet a skittish animal but he might as well traverse an empty distance inside himself because he can't feel those words at all, he can't connect them to a reality, a world he might feel at home in. All he feels, instead, is anxiety, static inside his mind, crushing white noise, nothing going in, nothing coming out, and the scratchy fabric of the new hoodie, still stiff and uncomfortable because it's new and hasn't been worn enough so feel comfortable, to feel _safe_ , on his skin is a manifestation of that. The straw that breaks the camel's back, if straws were ever able to do that. It's too much for him to handle, it's like someone poured cement on his bones, he can't move, can't breathe, he's frozen in this body, frozen in this hoodie, frozen in fear.

Frozen, right here, on the parking lot of a local church while the world continues to spin.

"And you're looking so smart, too, Joshie."

A smile he can't read at all. _Looking smart._

Language he can't decipher. Words with no meaning. He doesn't have a script for this, he's got no words for this, again and again and again.

_Fear, fear, fear._

(Repeat, repeat, repeat)

Inside his mind he's running a thousand miles an hour but his body is forced to a standstill.

White noise inside his mind.

Static.

_Fear, fear, fear._

(Repeat, repeat, repeat)

A new place, new people. He has no idea how many people are going to attend, what kind of conditions they have. All he knows is that the meetings are supposed to be _informal_ , a word that's printed on the flyer with no further explanation. _Informal meetings_ , but there's no script for that, there's no script for situations that aren't clear, there's no script when words are flying around with no meaning attached to them.

 _Informal_. He might as well be in free fall.

The flyer had been folded so many times it's crinkled in impossible places. Josh traces the lines with his fingernails, up and down, up and down, but the paper just gives away under the weight of all those words, all those situations that could happen. Josh tried to ask questions but his mind wasnt't ready, he was stuck on words he didn't understand and so he repeated them back, for a week, his iPad reading them out, in a desperate attempt for him to become familiar with this.

_Group._

_Informal._

_Church._

_(Fear, fear, fear)_

_(Repeat, repeat, repeat)_

Josh squints his eyes. There's no sign that there's a group meeting. There are no signs that other people, "people who are just like you," like the flyer says, are here. No cars, no voices, no laughter. Nothing social. But that's nothing like him, anyways. It looks forlorn, just like the other seven times his mom took him here to get used to the venue and get a feeling for it. Josh loved the eerie emptiness of the parking lot, the bumpy road that lead towards it, the wild hedgerow on either sides of it and the church itself, a small, white building, the sound the pebbles under his shoes, the rustling of the trees in the wind, the way the sun fought its way through the clouds. The emptiness doesn't feel content anymore, not with the added pressure of people, strangers, to enter this space. His space.

It feels different now. Now the emptiness feels like anticipation. Now it feels llike dread. If only he could stay on his own. Feels much more like him, anyway. The meeting starts in about 25 minutes, and he still doesn't know enough about the group. Having a flyer to hold on to won't change that. Having words like _disabled_ , _chronically ill_ , _informal_ , and _group meetings_ won't change any of that because these words have no meaning. Josh presses his fingernails into his palms, desperate to recall the feeling as he felt his way around the church for the first time, the acoustics in there, but he can't recall it, it's all buried underneath _fear, fear, fear_ now.

Things are coming to a standstill now.

He's heard the conversations his mom had with someone called Brendon who's running the group. Brendon knows a lot about him by now. About the autism spectrum, about Augmentative and Alternative Communication, AAC for short, about this device. About shutdowns, meltdowns, and stimming. About "communication strategies when dealing with nonverbal autistic people like Joshua," a lecture his mom has given many times.

What Brendon doesn't know is that Josh actually never goes by _Joshua_. He doesn't know that his hair color is pink. He doesn't know what his real hair color looks like. He doesn't know that he loves to play the drums and that his favorite band is Death Cab for Cutie. He doesn't even know what his favorite song by Death Cab is, or his favorite record.

He doesn't know that Josh has a lot to say and that he longs to say it for himself.

Brendon know everything that is wrong with him. He doesn't know what makes him happy. He doesn't know what makes the earth realign under his feet with a joy that fulfills his entire body. A joy that makes him jump up and down, and spin around, a joy that makes his entire body move until the world becomes less terrifying.

Josh doesn't know anything about Brendon.

"Alright, honey, should we go? I told Brendon we'd come early."

It takes a while for Josh to register what is being said, much longer to process these words. Words don't have meaning now and they refuse to translate into actions.

There's no joy in being frozen.

The hoodie makes him feel disconnected from his body and his mind, nothing comes in, nothing goes out. He isn't supposed to be here, early, in this hoodie, stuck on words, unable to move except for his fingernails which dig deep into his skin in an attempt to bring him back. 

Static, stuck on panic, stuck on words.

(repeat, repeat, repeat)

The hoodie just isn't right, it's not, the material isn't right, it has strings, it's the wrong color, he didn't want to wear it, he wanted to go for one of his older hoodies instead, the grey one that goes well with his pink hair, the way it's always been because it's texture translates into safety the way nothing else can. As soon as Josh took his hoodie out of his closet, his mom dashed in, telling him to put "that old thing" away, _Joshua, this hoodie has holes, you cannot wear this,_ _look what I got you, this hoodie is new_ , but Josh couldn't focus, all he remembered was his mom's voice, her way of saying _Joshua_ , which meant no discussions and his favorite hoodie, which disappeared in his closet, and the new hoodie, which felt like barbed wire hot-glued to his skin.

It's wrong, his hands were telling her, picking at the hoodie, mouthing the words, his hands picking at the foreign texture as if removing dead skin, as if removing old memory, _wrong, wrong, wrong_ , but there was nothing except _Joshua_ and _no._ As Josh felt himself falling away into the wrongness of it all the words he imagined himself saying at group meeting fell away, too. The words he imagined to say as Josh, someone who loves Death Cab and playing the drums and dying his hair in radiant colors because it makes him feel alive.

He doesn't have the words. The words have him, words like autism and nonverbal and meltdown and Augmentative and Alternative Communication. He feels boxed in, by the hoodie, by those labels, and now it's other people talking for him, by him, again and again.

People talk over you and at you when you're autistic. 

People talk over you and at you when they think you can't talk.

People refuse to listen when they assume you've got nothing to say.

People who start to talk just as Josh begins to type, people who take his iPad without asking, people who ask question after question without giving Josh time to process, people who want to know why he's typing, not talking, as if one these words can't mean the same thing. People who want to know why he isn't talking before they want to know his name. People who look surprised when Josh's mom, dad or sometimes his siblings tell said stranger that _yes, he can hear you_ before Josh starts typing furiously.

People who treat Josh like a circus attraction, as if they'ne never seen a person using a tablet to communicate. People who conveniently forget that they're using their phones and computers to text, too. "For us it's different, though." Obviously. For the able-bodied it's different, always. The perks of normalcy.

"It's called being an AAC user" - "That's so interesting! So does the computer do the talking for him? Can I try, too?" 

It's like being invited to swim in the open sea when your hands are tied and a thunderstorm is coming and everyone's watching, excpecting you to go out there and survive. They're watching from a distance. You're out there, gasping for air, going under, again and again.

And they're watching.

Words are flying through the air, too fast to even register, and people are watching, their eyes scanning you, with a look you can't read at all. They're expecting you to join. Not really, though, because you can't talk, right? 

Which is not the true.

And it's not the same as having nothing to say.

"Joshua, come on. Let's go. Brendon is waiting for us."

Words have no meaning. Words don't translate into actions. All his senses are dialed up: the pebbles underneath his feet sound like tectonic plates are shifting, the trees are no longer rustling, they're whispering in foreign tongues, tongues Josh can't decipher. It's all too much, the emptiness is threatening him, it's calling for him, the sky above, the ground below, leaving Josh empty-handed in this crushing absurdity. His lungs fill up with water or maybe just tears, making it impossible to talk at all.

...

From the inside, the church looks different today. A handful of plastic chairs arranged into a circle, Josh is counting six. Cookies scattered on plates. Josh can hear Brendon before he can see him. A body that's bouncing off the walls. Brendon is all exclamation marks, in the best possible sense.

"Hi guys, how are you doing! I'm Brendon! It's good to finally meet you!"

A smile that makes his eyes crinkle. A body that can't stand still, in all the places where Josh's body is refusing to move.

Brendon doesn't look like he slows down, ever. He also doesn't look like he'd treat Josh differently, ever, and for that Josh is grateful.

Seconds pass. The feared awkwardness of first introductions is made worse by the fact that his iPad is still in his mom's bag and Josh is stuck on the words he had wanted to type, now drying like fresh paint inside his throat. Lumps of vowels and consonants that look nothing like his name.

_I'm Josh. I'm Josh. Josh. Josh. Josh. Jsshhh._

Unpronouncable, undecipherable. The foreign feeling of language on his tongue digs up dark memories of speech therapy before his parents were introduced to AAC and he was given a tablet to communicate. The shame of not being able to pronounce his name. Of not being able to speak, and of other people knowing. The looks he got at the supermarket when was out with his family and he hummed or moaned to communicate. His family always understood it, it got him around, and it got everyone else talking, too.

The shame.

The guilt.

He never hated himself more.

Josh doesn't want to meet Brendon with silence, he's got so much to say and yet he can't seem to get it right. With people. He's starting at the ground, fighting through the fear. Brendon is tapping, tapping, moving, always.

"Here you go, honey."

His iPad. Josh grabs it with both hands and opens the communication app with flying fingers. He can feel Brendon looking, curiously, and the pressure makes his brain crash. He wants to be able to just walks up to people and introduce himself. He wants to deal with social situations as effortlessly as Brendon does. He wants to jump around, too.

Josh wants to be himself without being judged for it.

He has a thousand stories bottled up, inside, but it's all clogged up, festered, inaccessible inside. Instead, his fingers find the phrases his speech therapist has installed on the iPad for him. As soon as he hits the buttons Josh starts to cringe. It a cacophony of wrongness. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

_Hello_

_Nice to meet you_

_My name is Joshua_

The lamest introduction ever. The words don't even sound like him at all. He doesn't even go by Joshua, it's Josh, Josh, J-O-S-H, he fingerspelled his name to his therapist but his therapist didn't care about the intricacies of Josh's communicative needs (and didn't know about fingerspelling, either). His mom, however, was over the moon and that's all that mattered. "Doesn't our Joshie sound nice."

Nice. Who wants to sound _nice._

It doesn't sound anything like his siblings speak or people his age. To Josh, the words his therapist saved on the ipad and which his parents have worked with sound make him like a stranger. They don't sound like him at all, and when he doesn't have the energy for typing and coming up with something, which is often enough to notice, he reverts to the phrases that are pre-saved on the iPad and symbols for basic wants and needs. 

(And it doesn't help that with the help of his sister, he programmed different things on there, they say, things he imagined he could say, too, which his parents promptly found and deleted because _those words are nappropriate in our household.)_

_Hello. Nice to meet you. My name is._

The frustration builds. Hot, shameful, blinding. His therapist made him sound like a stranger with a foreign language phrase book, just one that's digital and looks fancy.

Brendon doesn't even blink. If anything, his smiles widens, making his eyes crinkle.

"It's great to meet you, Joshua. Do you want a tour of the church?"

...

Brendon keeps talking. He's bouncing about, showing Josh the church (small), the corner where the group is supposed to meet (smaller still), bathrooms (tiny) and the kitchen for the staff (extremely tiny, fits Brendon and no one else).

He keeps talking, with his voice, his body. Josh knew Brendon could be his friend from the moment he saw the iPad and smiled, a genuine smile. He hasn't asked Josh how the iPad works or if he can use it. As Brendon keeps talking, laughing, commenting on the church and himself, Josh slowly finds the courage to be himself, to show a part of himself to Brendon.

A conversation.

Brendon talks.

And Josh answers.

Josh's voice can be found in the light as it falls through the stained glass, making the dust glow. Josh's voice is inside the movement of his fingers as he flicks them in front of his eyes. Back and forth, back and forth, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Stained glass, glowing dust, and there's a presence that can only be felt in a quiet, empty church.

Like looking at the full moon in the vast, empty sky and being held by the love for something much greater.

Like unlearning the alphabet and being filled with something much gentler than language could ever be.

Like drifting off to sleep and becoming your favorite color.

_Breathe in_

_Breathe out_

_(Repeat,_ _repeat)_

Josh is speaking through his fingertips, they're _tap tap tap_ ing as he's folded himself on a church bench, away from the circle of chairs, away from anything that's new and scary and unknown. He may wear a hoodie he doesn't know, he may be in a place he doesn't know, but he's got his drumsticks with him, the yellow ones, and that means things will be ok. They will be alright.

_Tap, tap tap_

(Repeat, repeat)

It starts with a beat on the wood, simple as that. Drumming is his way of being in this space, interacting with it, processing it, understanding it, piece by piece, beat by beat. Drumming makes him feel full, physically, spiritually, emotionally. It allows him to connect with his environment like nothing else can because it makes him forget he has a body, that he is a body. It's _tap tap tap_ and _more_ and _more_ and just enough and all he could ask for in this moment.

_Tap, tap tap_

(Repeat, repeat)

(Repeat, repeat)

(Repeat, repeat)

He can feel Brendon smile his signature smile right next to him, drumming along with his fingers on his jeans, moving his whole body. 

"This is cool, Bro! Are you playing the drums? I didn't know that!"

Before Josh can nod or type yes yes YES his mom comes running over.

"Josh, be _quiet_ , this is a church, you really, can't do this, I don't think it's allowed-"

 _Be quiet._ Because his autistic body, his tapping, flapping, rocking, drumming body is a lot of things.

But first of all, it's to be hidden.

Being autistic means a lot of things. It's too much. Being "in your own world" (always, always). Being too sensitive to specific sounds, textures, and foods. Too many stimuli. Taking too much time to process it all (and what is there to process? _everything, everything_ ). Too many meltdowns and shutdowns on bad days. Too many bad days. Too much too fast.

Being too quiet. Being too loud. Being too embarrassing. Being too weird. Being too awkward.

Too much autisticness.

Being autistic is too much. 

Or it's not enough.

Not enough stimuli. Inertia. _Everything, everything_ comes crashing down at once, just slower.

Being stuck, again and again. Prompting. Words are not enough. Never enough.

When he grew up, he wasn't "like other kids." Not social enough. Not verbal enough. Not neurotypical enough. Not independent enough. Not functional enough, as if human beings were pieces of furniture instead of people, or computer programmes that crash. Executive dysfunction.

Not normal enough.

Being autistic is too much. Or it's not enough.

It's just never enough.

In the eyes of Josh's parents who shush him, be quiet, quiet, quiet hands, Joshua, when he's out with them and humming, flapping, rocking at his favorite song being played in the supermarket, a neighbor who looks at him like he's damaged goods. Professionals who hand out leaflets bearing words such as _behavioral management therapy, challenging behavior_ and _residential care_.

Being autistic means a lot of things.

It's just never enough.

Someone jumps in, literally. Josh startles but remembers to breathe. This is Brendon. It's just Brendon.

(Breathe, breathe)

"Oh it's fine, don't worry, this is our space for the afternoon and the people who let us use this church are really cool with whatever we're doing here. We actually have another group member, Tyler, who's really into music, too, he's playing the piano and singing and rapping, it's awesome. I've been trying to get him to play something for us for quite some time now. You guys should talk."

His mom smiles a smile Brendon is unaware of, but Josh can read just so well.

_You guys should talk._

Brendon smiles back, still unaware. The bliss of oblivion.

"I love your drumsticks, by the way. They're sick."

...

"TYLER! Good to see you!"

Josh nearly falls off his seat. Cold sweat starts to break out. It's been six minutes since Brendon told him to pick a chair and "settle down" and another five minutes since he settled with his headphones on, trying to prepare himself for a group of strangers to invade the space he recently claimed as his own. Group is about to start in ten minutes and the first member has made an appearance, someone who goes by the name of TYLER. Josh cranes his neck. TYLER, as in Tyler, the pianist-singer-rapper who's refusing to play in front of other people?

Josh is looking, bit for bit. A new guy, someone who looks he's about his age, in his early or mid- twenties, it's hard to tell when the person is tiny, the hoodie is big and there's a skeleton printed right on it. He's marching past him, carrying a Tupperware container with cookies. Josh doesn't dare to look, he knows he's not supposed to stare at people, DON'T STARE, DON'T STARE, but skeleton-hoodie-guy doesn't seem to notice him.

Josh can't help but smile. So much about _appropriate clothing_. He can see his mom doing a double-take when she sees Tyler drop off the cookies and wave sheepishly to Brendon before he folds himself on a chair. Looks like he's got something in common with someone: a love for music (apparently) and well-worn hoodies. The excitement borders on anxiety and he starts to rock to calm himself down. He wants to know more about Tyler and his music, he wants to know if this hoodie is his favourite, if he wears hoodies all day, like Josh does, organized by color, for the week. Or of it's just skeletons all day long. What happens at night, though? What happens to a tiny skeleton at night?

He wants to know, he wants to know, but he doesn't know how to connect to TYLER, to Tyler, to the guy who took the seat opposite him, the guy who's wearing his bones like a shield.

Josh risks a look when Tyler bends down to tie his shoes. White bones on a black hoodie. Sweatpants. Josh's eyes follow the movement of Tyler's fingers. His nails are cut painfully short.

That's when he notices.

Tyler is wearing a medical ID bracelet. The silver plate hangs loosely off Tyler's wrist. The bracelet is too big, it doesn't fit him at all and it looks like it's hasn't been worn at all. Josh starts to bite his lip. Tyler doesn't notice him looking, he's still busy with his shoes, and it's only when Tyler fumbles with his laces and pulls his sleeve up, lost in thought and in action, that Josh begins to notice something else and waves of pain and empathy shoot right through him.

There isn't just the bracelet, there's a rubber band too, and both aren't enough to cover the scar tissue, three scars, all red and angry. They start at the wrist and travel all the way up on Tyler's left arm. A desperate attempt to break your body when your mind is broken already.

"Looks like someone got real serious here," a surgeon said once, huffing, just like surgeons do when they stich you back up and feel privileged to guess your psychiatric history. "You can count yourself lucky that there's no nerve damage to your hand." 

Count yourself lucky.

No one knew how much it actually hurt to make those cuts.

Count yourself lucky.

Josh can't take it in, he can't, he can't, and before he can control himself he's humming to calm himself down. Pain, pain, pain.

Tyler stops in his tracks. Quickly, with trained fingers, he hides the medical ID and the rubber band back inside the sleeve of his hoodie and pulls the sleeve back down, his face going beet red.

Josh takes his hand inside his mouth and starts to bite down, hard, to stop himelf from humming. _Shut up shut up shut up_

"How is it going? It's good to see you!"

Brendon, larger than himself and oblivious to what had just happened squeezes himself on a chair next to Tyler. Now it's just Brendon and Tyler, or rather Brendon and Brendon, with Tyler whispering something to the ground, and Josh feels like a voyeur, he feels like intruding, like looking on, and he knows he isn't supposed to stare, he isn't, isn't, this wasn't supposed to happen, it wasn't, he just wanted to say hello to Tyler but the shock of what he just saw sits deep inside his bones.

He just wanted to say hello.

The conversation continues. Even through his headphones Josh can hear every word. There's nobody there yet except them and his mom. Group should have started by now but it's only them now, and Josh starts to feel a little sick at the thought of only the three of them attending, plus his mom. He feels like he won't be able to look at Tyler who's probably mad at him, or downright angry, or disappointed, he doesn't know, he doesn't know, there's just silence on his part and fear on Josh's. 

A nod. Tyler doesn't look up but his fingers finally stop fighting with the laces on his shoes which are impossibly tied up at this point.

"I'm happy to be here."

A voice, high-pitched, cracking slightly on the word _happy_.

Tyler sounds like he knows what it's like to be lonely.

Tyler sounds like he has a lot to say.

...

"Alright, I think we should start. Welcome, introductions everyone!"

People are starting to arrive. Group should have started twenty minutes ago. Brendon told him that introductions are usually short, it's just your name and your "story," whatever that means. There are no rules, no script, and Josh is getting beyond nervous. He's sick with fear.

Silences. People have different ways of carrying those, all the things they're not saying. Josh can see them shining through as the other members introduce themselves. Names. Diagnoses. Faces that are up close, always, a wave of details. Chronic pain. Depression. ADHD. Anxiety. Nails bitten to the curb.. A stressball that's being squeezed tightly. Knees that are bounced.

Everyone carries their silences differently.

Tyler keeps sitting on his hands as if restraining them and Josh can see it, can feel it, this is someone who's handling his body with the delicacy of an atomic bomb. This is somebody whose thoughts are entangled with barbed wire.

His voice doesn't crack when he speaks as if he practiced his part or as if he's given this lecture a lot. Instead, it goes flat, it's devoid of emotion, empty, almost dead, as if he's reading out, a story that isn't related to him at all. Instead, he's squinting his eyes and shakes his head a little before it's his turn to speak. Everyone pretends to look away.

"I'm Tyler. I have drug-resistant epilepsy and ... "

A silence that could fill a lake

Falling, falling, as if you never meant to be upright

(They don't call it the falling sickness for no reason)

Fingernails dug into soft flesh, a body all hard angles, bony, barbed wire, inside, all over

"... mental health issues."

A Pause. Someone sniffs. Josh can see two girls sharing glances as if sharing an inside joke. The absence of laughter is deafening.

Brendon leans forward, giving the girls a warning look. "And we're very happy about that."

The others hum in agreement, and this is the first time in forever that Josh hasn't heard scolding, or suggestions or fixing or therapy in the context of sickness, of disability.

Instead, they're told they're okay.

A reminder that you can be okay.

And just like that, he can feel it, maybe here

He can be a person and not just failed expectations

Be someone different

Other than sharp elbows and fingernails dug deep into the palms of your hands

Be someone different

He can feel it, feel it in the echo of this room, feel it in the way the sound carries through his whole body

He might become some different

A person, after all, and that comma, right here

A tectonic shift inside his consciousness

Tyler's response from earlier echoes in his mind, in his chest.

_I'm happy to be here._

A promise, starting small, but a promise, still, a promise.

"Tyler, are you done?"

Brendon.

A nod, on Tyler's part, and silence that screams louder than a thousand words.

"Okay, who's next? Joshua? Do you want to tell the group a bit about yourself?"

He can feel the curious sideway glances, the way people look underneath the clamor and noise of the chair dragging and chitter and chatter and the silence of skeleton-hoodie-guy (sorry, Tyler, Tyler, Tyler) which he can't read, can't place at all.

He doesn't know how to be normal, he's never been expected to

He doesn't know how to inhabit this body other than this

Other than the rules he made for himself, half-sentences he's whispering, a desperate attempt to stay rooted in his body when he can feel himself to begin to float away, but half-sentences don't make person, they don't, and this doesn't feel real at all

_Stop staring stop staring stop staring_

_Look at me when I'm talking to you_

_Stop staring stop staring stop staring_

_Too much too much too much_

_Not enough not enough not enough not enough_

Looking at other people feels like staring into the sun. His sight becomes peripheral. He can't see anything or he sees too much. And right here, in this moment, it hits him. The sudden silence that sets in, the tension in the room, _you could cut it with a butterknife_ is what his mom would say, but that doesn't make any sense, either, you can't just cut air with a butterknife, and what use would that be. You'd end up with lumps of fear stuck in your throat. You'd end up with fear and silence, silence, silence. 

_Make it stop, stop, stop._

What was noise and clamor and _too much too much make it stop make it stop_ is now nothing. And that overwhelms him just the same.

 _Make it stop, stop, stop_.

Being autistic is too much or not enough.

_Make it stop make it stop make it stop_

It's just never enough.

_Make it stop make it stop make it stop_

His mom's voice from afar, prompting him. It doesn't register. Words don't translate into actions. Words don't have meaning. Josh is stuck, stuck in this room, stuck in his head, stuck on fear, and the only person who looks like he knows that it feels like sits across from him and snaps his rubber band against his wrist whilst avoiding his eyes.

_Snap snap snap_

_Make it stop make it stop make it stop_

_Never enough never enough never enough_

Trying to remember to feel safe like trying to remember your own name right before falling asleep.

_Make it stop make it stop make it stop_

Josh takes a deep breath. His iPad weighs a ton, but not so much as the silence inside his lungs. His fingers find the letters right away, he doesn't even have to think about it. He can feel Tyler's eyes but he isn't staring like the others do. And that's when Josh knows. 

_Hi, I'm Joshua._

A voice that isn't his and yet it is. The words weigh a ton and they're loud. Someone needs to fix the speakers. He can hear it through his headphones and it makes his ears ring. But then, he's always been Josh. He's always been himself. He's always been autistic.

He goes on.

_But you can call me Josh._

The others stare.

Tyler nods, in silent agreement.

That's when Josh knows. That's when Josh just knows.

A silence that doesn't have to hurt.

A silence that can mean something.

And just like that, the way the others stare at him, their curiosity, the chasm that opened up between them and him as soon as he began to type, as soon as he began to show a part of himself and was greeted with staring - it doesn't hurt so much.

Brendon's voice, across a distance.

"Okay, Josh, anything else?"

Another deep breath.

_And I'm autistic._

Tyler looks up. Josh freezes and then smiles, slowly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi there, this is a quick little sketch I wrote. I'm currently at the neurology ward for epilepsy monitoring and life is throwing me a gigantic curveball in the form of a really difficult hospital stay ... so I just wrote this, last night as I lay awake. I might write more when I have the words. This is all I have for now. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's been reading my stories.

Being chronically ill is like speaking a language no one understands. Communication is embodied - all done through the body, your body, that unreliable narrator of yours. The flutter of an eyelid. Numb feet, tingly you say, tingly, because that sounds a lot cuter than _sensory problems or disturbances in feeling._ When you your whole body sways, it sways like a flag in the wind as if that body has lost its middle ground, its equilibrium and is exposed to a strong wind or a current. It's swaying, swaying, trembling, tingling.

The ground is shifting, moving. You don't know where you're going, literally, because you can't feel your feet. The ground is moving, it's shifting, creating edges for you to fall and bang your knee against the radiator, run into the door and break your toe, and fall in the shower. The ground is moving, it's shifting, while language disappears and you're left to resort to nods or a shake of the head.

_DId you fall, again?_

_Does it hurt?_

_Was it a seizure?_

_Are you sure?_

_I don't like this at all, Tyler. Let's get you an appointment with your neurologist._

Language disappears, and yet there's a doctor's disapproving hum, the one you can read so well because you've had more neurological exams than birthdays by now.

_Red flags in neurological examinations_

_Cranial nerve function_

_Coordination and strength_

_Nerve sensation_

_Reflexes_

_Presence of Lhermitte’s sign._

A language as lonely as a newborn naked in the snow. 

There's no place for warmth or joy in incurable neurological disease. No one's blowing out candles, no one sings a song.

No guests waiting for you at the table. No party hats, no ballons.

But this is different, there are guests at this table, just your fears, fears in the form of a walker or a wheelchair Tyler saw on the brochures on the neurologist's desk, people with walkers, smiling, and he stared at it, feeling the full absence of his life, and this, his body, this body, instead, never enough to make up for what's missing.

“Numbness can be an early symptom," the doctors words, from far away, and Tyler thumbs through another leaflet with definitions. Numbness, hypoesthesia: the absence of sensation.

He's speaking a language no one understands and he'll never get used to feeling estranged from a body prodded and poked with reflex hammers and tuning torks and clothed in language hardly recognizable as language at all. He'll never get used to feeling completely dissociated and overwhelmed at once while his body continues to just _be,_ in a way he can't feel, shape, and locate at all.

His body, a stranger, the kind of stranger he'd pretend not to see on the street. The kind he'd be embarrassed by.

The worst kind.

Tyler always took pride in his athletic ability, despite all. He dragged himself to the basketball court even during his worst times, even as he was drugged up on epilepsy and antipsychotic meds. On the court he could be anyone, he could be Tyler, just Tyler. On the court nobody knew he was sick. He was able to play a decent game, even on meds, even through seizures, through auras, until this new illness, this thief, found its way into his body and took his coordination, his sense of balance. What's the use of being a basketball player if you're missing every shot. 

A body frozen in self-hatred, in fear. Tyler can't see himself using a walker, not on the basketball court, not on the street. It feels like forever ago when he was worried about people seeing him having a seizure in public, when he argued with his parents about wearing a helmet. But not this, not this, he's yelling at this legs as another wave of numbness shoots through this right leg. Not this, not this, but pleading doesn't penetrate your spinal cord.

_Absence often feels like something._

Sometimes it feels like despair.

No one understands, not doctors, who want to make you better but can't. Not parents, who want to see you better, but can't. Not friends, who are used to to you being your old self, but that's long gone. Not Tyler, who doesn't want to get sicker. By this point he doesn't really believe in the point of getting better, not with this body, this brain, but he doesn't want to get sicker. Not this. Not this.

Yet he's left to watch, a marathon runner with sprained ankles as his body disobeys, as it gets sicker and sicker while words disintegrate in his mind. No camouflage of speech now. Just words written with the meat of a nectarine and sometimes, something darker, something sticky, the color of crimson kept in tubes at the doctor's office. Tyler's mouthing the words, tracing them like chalklines in his dreams when language returns to his body like a thief, like a version of himself he long forgot.

He's becoming his own shadow in his dreams, a version of himself he can live with because he can't remember who he was when he wakes up in the morning, feet tingly and numb.

He doesn't remember running for miles on end without bone-crushing fatigue. Hee doesn't remember running and the only thing he could feel is the constant _thump thump thump_ of his feet on the concrete, like a second heartbreat. He doesn't remember running and being able to trust his body without a second thought.

He remembers stumbling along, through a forest, with blocks of cement tied to his feet. He remembers walking slowly, exploring the ground underneath him like uncharted territory. Tyler pushed forwards, making his way over plants and rocks and roots, down in the forest, searching for something that will bring him his voice back. His lungs were burning, his throat was hoarse was if he'd been screaming for hours already. He doesn't remember running or sreaming. He remembers falling, a particular nasty root that got wrapped around his leg or perhaps just his own foot, it doesn't matter now, it's all foreign, it's all unfeeling, it's all decaying, until there's a sudden eletric sensation and he's back in this world, in his body, where feet don't run or walk. They stumble, even without blocks of concrete, they shuffle, slowly, wobbly, _you're wobbly, Tyler,_ is what his dad remarked last night, _wobbly_ , as if he was a toddler learning to take his first steps. His feet don't feel like they're ready to explore the world, however. Instead, they're the exact opposite - forever tired, as if they've had enough. Tyler can't blame them.

He's tired, too. 

He's tired of failing, tired of falling, tired of being tired, tired of waking up, tired of the whole circle starting, his brain feeling computerized, programmed all wrong, deep where Tyler imagines his regions of epileptic wave activity like an ocean underneath a sky, both black, both unforgiving.

He's just so tired.

Both threaten to drown him, like a tidal wave. It's coming for him, when he's least expecting it. Taking more than his consciousness. It's a constant threat to his self-confidence, his self-worth, self-respect. His dignity.

"Don't be ashamed," is what an intern said to him during his last stay at the epilepsy monitoring ward, "don't be ashamed."

But there it was, the shame, lingering in the room, like a bad smell. A bad memory, while Tyler tried to avoid looking in the mirror and seeing himself, with 50 electrodes glued to his scalp. _Don't be ashamed_ , as everything came back, all feelings, past and present, which tied him to his illness just as his illness tied him to himself. 

He could drown there, here. In illness, in falling, in failing, in repeating, in the wrongness, the sickness, the screaming, the hating himself, hating where it hurts, hating where no one sees until he ends up under harsh hospital light with the impulse to rip out his IV and paint the walls a dark crimson.

He never knew there were so many unseen edges on a kitchen floor until he took his second fall. Unseen edges on the bathroom floor too, right as you turn around in the shower to grab the shampoo. A crash, a bang, a shout. _Tylerareyouokay,_ frantic hammering from Tyler's mom on the bathroom door because Tyler started to lock doors again, he started to trust his body enough, just that bit of safety, that promise of normalcy, and he couldn't speak, just nod, which wasuseless, almost as useles as falling in the shower is, because no one could see you. No one could see that he wasn't okay.

No one can see. How hard he was trying, just trying to stay afloat. And how fast he was sinking, inside.

Invisible edges in the floor and Tyler's toe and knee are shimmering, in the colors of the rainbow. That must mean there's hope somewhere, high up in the air.

Being able to trust his body feels as distant as a memory as being able to remember his first, real steps, without second thoughts.

Tyler opens his eyes, slowly. He's been hiding in the trenches of his mind as memory morphs into a flashback becomes the unsettling feeling of an aura lingering in his stomach becomes the cold sweat on his back. The notion lingers, like a bad taste you can't get get rid of and as he takes two attempts to get up, his left foot tingly, numb, and uncoordinated he swears under his breath. His feet may be numb but he can still feel the rest. He can feel and see what his body can and _can't_ do, which may the worst part of it all. He's alive for it.

When you have a treatment-resistent neurological disease, the inside of your skull becomes the battle ground for a war of aggression that's waged at the level of your brain, your mind, your consciousness, your thinking. Your everything.

Slowly, he starts to pull a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt out of his drawers. He's going for the yellow one this time. It'll match his knee. Rainbow-yellow. The color of hope or pain or maybe just a hematoma, a bit of blood that seeped out of a blood vessel. That's it, he thinks as he struggles with his arms through the sleeves, this just a body, his body, a vessel that got bruised, forced to leak and now it's bruising and shimmering in the most impossible, improbable colors. His body, a faulty vessel.

...


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, I'm back from the hospital and I've got the first part of a new chapter ready. This hospital stay was incredibly difficult for me and I'm still trying to process everything that happened. So this is just the first bit for the time being because nothing calms me down like writing does, and I really want to continue this story.
> 
> Thank you for reading <3

“Everyone’s staring at me.”

Tyler turns his back to the strangers who look at him curiously, their eyes tracing his head and the fifty electrodes glued to his scalp and secured with bright red tape. He isn’t quite sure what would make the fact that he’s connected to a portable EEG machine any less visible but using bright red tape to glue 50 electrodes to his scalp certainly isn’t the way to go. Or having an EEG at all, if that matters.

“Tyler, I really don’t - Chris? Can you hear me? Yes, I’m at the hospital, I can’t stay with Tyler, the rules for visitors got changed because of the pandemic …. no, Tyler is admitted, he already got the electrodes but the nurses said I have to leave, I’ll be home in about half an hour…wait, I didn’t get that…. what? Yes, I can pick up Zack, don’t worry…”

“…. how awful when young people have accidents. Look, his head is full with red tape.” 

Tyler stares at the old woman sitting next to his mom who’s busy delegating the family at home. Did she really just say that? She’s staring at him, up and down her searching gaze goes, up and down, Tyler can feel it all over his body. She’s looking for signs of illness, which, in Tyler's case, is located in Tyler’s head, in the mind, the brain. Both of which turn his head into an entire world of its own. But that’s not what she’s seeing. All she can see are the electrodes glued to his scalp, a multitude of cables, each one a different color which corresponds to the electrode on Tyler's head. They all feed to into the portable EEG machine Tyler carries with him in a dark blue bag, the “seizure button” he's supposed to press when an aura comes hidden well between the cables.

An accident, the easiest explanation. How easy that would have been. An accident, like a scraped knee, fixable with a bit of tape and _there, there_. 

How easy that would have be, pretending his mind and brain are broken, just like a broken leg. Thoughts wrapped in gauze, immobilized in a cast until your sense of reality and self regrow from the fissures of seizures and psychosis. How easy that would have been, compared to the war that’s being waged behind Tyler’s forehead. His mind provides itself with enough ammunition to tear itself apart and all it takes is one toe out of line for the border between reality, hallucination and delusion to become porose again, for the world to crumble and come crashing down, just like it always does.

At least the admission is voluntary this time, Tyler thinks with a dark, sardonic pride in his brain’s ability to fabricate one catastrophe after another. Had he been admitted like the last time, straight from the ambulance to the acute psych ward, that woman would have a _real_ reason to talk. 

An accident. It’s more like having one accident after another, never knowing what will happen next. Tyler knows how other people, strangers, unacquainted with the world of severe neurological and mental illness, see him. How they assume he’s drunk when his gait becomes unsteady or think he’s intoxicated when he’s having a focal seizure and can’t talk. He doesn’t dare to imagine what they think when he’s having a psychotic episode (and yet he can see it in their eyes, always, lurking behind their eyeballs). People who rush to finish his sentences when he’s having difficulty finding the right words. People who assume he’s tired, just tired, when he’s curled up on the his parents' couch, his mind flattened and exhausted by the combination of anticonvulsant, antipsychotic and antidepressant medication. Tyler’s lucid enough to notice any of it yet too out of it to act on the self-hatred or the shame that follows. His brain doesn’t switch off, ever, not when he’s sleeping, dreams riddled with flashbacks from his last admission. Not when he’s seizing, when his left temporal lobe misfires and produces one focal seizure after another. 

Words like _unwell_ and _exhausting_ don’t even begin to touch what it feels to navigate the complex world of severe neurological and mental illness, not for Tyler, not for his siblings, not for his parents. Too ill for the local psychiatric day care center which doesn't take patients with psychotic illnesses, not ill enough for the one that specializes in chronic psychoses in adults but doesn't have a program for young adults, Tyler's been stuck at home, stuck with what his psychiatrist told him, again and again, routine is important, structure is important, social support is important. Tyler’s been setting himself a routine, planning his days with vigorous intensity, to get some control back, and if it’s only for the next 24 hours. _It’s about the small steps, Tyler_. Getting out of bed. Getting dressed. Eating, even though the Risperidone makes everything taste like cardboard.

Perpetually overwhelmed by videogames and the TV, Tyler resorts to playing Uno with his siblings and drinking one cup of earl grey tea after another.

Watching his mom water the flowers in the garden. _How lovely and green it all is, Tyler, look, everything’s blooming._ Trying his best to ignore their neighbors whom he can hear talking, he's pretty sure it's about him except it’s not, he isn’t supposed to think that, he's supposed to replace one intrusive thought with another, _how lovely and green, lovely and green it all is, lovely and green, lovely lovely lovely_ , and what a joke it all is, that we can hurt even in the sun. 

Helping his mom with the groceries. Cold sweat on the forehead because he’s never prepared for the onslaught of music and noise and fluorescent light. Taking a detour through the store to avoid people following him. And another. And another. Back in the car. Wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans. _Breathe, breathe, breathe._ His mom is chatting with someone else right beside the car, another woman, a mom probably, one whose kids are in college or working, not helping their parents buy food in the middle of the day. The woman waves and smiles. Tyler stares at her with wide eyes. _Does she know me how does she know me does she know my name does she know where I live why why breathe, breathe, breathe_. The smile melts off the woman’s face. They’re sitting in hick silence on the way home. Tyler’s mom, wrapped in worry about her eldest. Tyler, stuck in _fear, fear, fear._

Seeing his psychiatrist for chats, because that’s what it feels on the good days, they’re chatting, about anything, him, his mood, his symptoms and it feels almost easy to believe this is just a chat, not a visit at a psychiatrist’s office with his social worker present, the one with the _okey dokey_ smile on his face. On the less-than-good days, it feels like a colosseum, full of the weapons, the ammunition Tyler’s mind provides itself with and a shield he can’t hold. On the bad days, it feels like nothing. On the really bad days, the weapons come alive. On the really bad days, Tyler folds himself on a chair, listens to the small talk between his psychiatrist and social worker about how diffiult it is to keep a lemon tree indoors. Tyler stares blankly at the tree the psychiatrist keeps on his desk and wonders whether there are microphones hidden inside the yellow fruits.

Words spoken from far, far away. The psychiatrist looks at him, distanced concern or puzzled worry or something Tyler can’t read at all. 

“I can hold the shield for you, Tyler.” 

Tyler presses his fingers inside his palm, saying nothing. Tyler knows that the psychiatrist is assessing him, even when he's silent. _Especially_ when he's silent. He’s looking beneath Tyler and the silences his body carries. The silence of thinking, fingers wrapped in his hear, thinking, thinking, thinking. The silence of worrying. The silence of falling out of reality. 

They talk about medications, adjusting dosages. Tipping the scales inside Tyler’s mind. Shrinking the fear, making the world inhabitable again. 

Seeing his therapist, a new one, the one his social worker organized for him. She’s young, maybe a few years older than he is. A stripey dress, matching socks, boat shoes. Bright blonde hair. Horn rimmed glasses. 27, he reckons. Maybe 28. He doesn't know if her clothing is part of her treatment - making him happy, distracting him from whatever he's feeling or if she’s just trying to prove something different than the black on black he's wearing. Tyler doesn't know. All he knows is that she hasn't seen many adult patients. And none like him, he can tell, by the blank look on her face. She’s talking about the exhibition of psychotic symptoms, making it sound like all part of a show. Af if nothing of this was real. 

_This is a safe space to share things_

But he can't, not when her eyes widen when he tells her about that one admission to the psych hospital when he was arguing with his psychiatrist who told him bluntly, “it’s as easy as pie, Tyler. Either you’re getting admitted voluntarily or else I’ll have your section papers ready and an ambulance to come pick you up. Your choice.” 

One big piece of cake.

In the end he was admitted, somehow not sectioned this time, because a tiny part of himself wanted to get better this time, wanted a way out, but he ended up on the acute ward again, was found to be a risk to himself. His medications were immediately adjusted and increased because Tyler was _agitated_ again, no he wasn’t, not this time, can’t he see, he’s going to get better, he’s saving himself, basically, it’s all going to get fixed, he just needs to be off the Risperidone, no needles anymore, he’s determined not to give up, not to give in, he’s got it all figured out but soon the air became too heavy around him, like a thick blanket he couldn’t lift and he was carried to his room like a piece of firewood ready to be thrown into the flames. 

All better.

Big fat piece of cake. 

And it’s easy, almost too easy to get carried away by those memories, the traumatic ones, the ones that haunt Tyler every time he can hear the siren song of an ambulance or a police car luring him deeper into his own head. His mind makes him blind to the kindness around him, blind to the memory of the people on the ward who actually cared. Those who ignored the gossip from the nurses’s station, the other nurses rolling their eyes. _It’s Tyler Joseph, again. He’s having an episode, probably stopped taking his meds. Told you we’d see him again here_. 

The nurses who came running when Tyler banged his head against the main door, demanding to be let out, pleading for someone to hear him ( _save me save me save me)_. Those who knew Tyler and didn’t call the doctor straight away but started talking to him instead. _Tell me what’s wrong, Tyler. No, I’m not here to spy on you. No, there are no microphones hidden in my shirt. Tell me, then._

The nurse from the night shift who didn’t ask how he was doing as the small hours dragged on, as Tyler’s mind refused to switch off, not even with the added aid of Diazepam. The one who asked him how his day had been instead because that’s all there is to a stay on the psych ward. A day. You keep existing. “A tall order,” Tyler murmured, speech slow and slurred. “A tall order,” the nurse repeated and Tyler knew she believed him. Believed in him to recover, again. 

_Recovery is possible, Tyler. This is an illness you can learn to manage._

The music therapist who let Tyler use the keyboard because Tyler had flat-out refused to join the “therapeutic choir,” everyone’s afternoon’s activity when the therapist was on the ward and it was time for music. The therapist, hair greying at the sides, eyes wrinkly and calm, his voice exactly the kind of soothing tone that told Tyler that he was taken seriously, not reprimanded or disciplined by nurses whose voices were dripping with condescension ( _time to calm down, Tyler. Do you want me to call the doctor? No? Then behave yourself_ ). The music therapist simply observed as Tyler banged on the keys and screamed his lungs out, turning fear into words, into something solid again.

“Sounds like you’ve got a lot to say.” 

The nurse who played basketball with him, one on one, in the smoker’s area, otherwise known as “the garden,” which was really just a bit of green space with a big fence all around. Garden sounds a lot nicer than “fenced, secure area for the patients”, however, and as soon as Tyler got “garden privileges,” which meant he was was no longer on one to one observation, he started to fool around with a basketball until a nurse joined in because playing basketball still felt easy, felt natural, felt like a part of himself he’s been missing, no, like a part he killed a long time ago and buried deep underground.

But Tyler can't say this, can't talk about killing parts of himself because that would change the conversation and he doesn't trust her with this part of his mind. The therapist keeps an iPad on her lap nonetheless, just like the one Josh has, yet she's only half as good at listening. Bent forward, she scribbles, and then, as if to catch her breath, stops, exhales loudly and scribbles again as if Tyler’s stories were a fascinating movie, or a novel, the stuff of fiction, not lived experience. 

“Wow, Tyler. You've been through a lot.”

 _A lot_ , that’s what people say, and stay silent, secretly glad they can go back to the normality, the safety of their psychosis- and epilepsy-free lives while Tyler is left with _a lot_.

Except Brendon, who doesn’t treat him as if he’s a lot, as if he’s weird, strange or crazy. “Because you’re not, Tyler. You’re not weird. You’re just different, and that’s okay.”

A reminder, just to be. 

The next group meeting. Brendon. Josh. Tyler’s been wondering about Josh, hoping he’ll attend, hoping he’s won’t be as nervous. Brendon said something about music, about Josh being a drummer, and Tyler can feel something in him come awake, something that feels easy and natural and good. The only thing that holds his focus, that keeps him anchored to a reality that’s not his own head. Music. 

He’s been working hard on establishing a pattern, a rhythm that allows him to exercise and relinquish control at the same time. Having a predictable schedule, a routine put in place, one he could rely on is everything to Tyler to keep him out of the throes of psychosis and at least he feels like it’s helping with his seizures, too. Hard to tell at this point, but after living with uncontrolled epilepsy for long enough you're just glad when the seizure activity doesn't get worse.

It’s survival, in its rawest form. 

And now the rug’s been pulled from underneath Tyler’s feet.

His numb, tingly, tired feet.

Tyler pulls the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands. He isn’t ready for this, for the next hospital admission, this time at the epilepsy monitoring ward. He wasn't supposed to go, either. His neurologist wasn't as happy as Tyler was with his seizures, “having one every two weeks is still too much, Tyler“ and when Tyler added that his feet felt numb he had put him on the waiting list of the epilepsy monitoring ward immediately and they had called with an early appointment, a rarity in the world of neurology.

2 weeks of continuous EEGs and seizures. A brain, a life viewed through the magnifying glass of neuropathology. It’s hard to believe that something good will come from this when all you worry about is what becoming a patient means — loss of privacy, identity, and sometimes, dignity.

It’s hard to stay positive when your part in this isn’t to be well. Quite the contrary. Tyler knows, with an impending sense of doom and dread, that he’s going to get really sick during the next two weeks. His neurologist wants to study his seizures to determine where they are coming from, to see if surgical resection is possible, and to see if the tingling in his feet is epileptic. All of this means lack of sleep, which means withdrawal of meds, which means seizures. Generalized, focal, long, short. Throwing up or pissing yourself mid-seizure. All the ugliness epilepsy has to offer. 

Loss of control in the most basic, most terrifying way. 

It’s hard to believe in what his dad told him this morning. “You’ve got to see it like that, Tyler. This has to get worse before it gets better. Like the last time when you were on the monitoring unit. You had your seizures and the neurologists took good care of you. They will come up with something.”

They have to, because Tyler isn’t ready to see what will happen should things get wrong again. 

It’s not like he’s ever been ready, and yet he’s caught by surprise how familiar the hospital still feels. Padded bed rails because seizing brains and limbs don’t go well with regular rails. Ringing the nurse every time you’ve got to get out of bed. Food on plastic trays. At least the cutlery isn’t made of plastic this time.

Hospital life. Vitals at 7. Breakfast and meds at 7.45. A nurse who pokes her head into his room. ( _Don’t take Topamax on an empty stomach, Tyler, I know you know this_ ). Lunch at 11.30. Coffee at 3 PM, even though he doesn’t drink coffee. Dinner and meds at 5.30. The night nurse comes with the Clexane injection at 8.30 and brings his night meds. ( _No, Tyler, this is the medication you’re taking for the night. I’ve had it checked. Yes, the dosage is correct. No, it’s not the generic. No, we didn’t change anything. Yes, you can trust me._ ) 

Rounds in the morning. 2 minutes at the very most. Talking to neurologists he doesn’t know, each morning it’s someone new, an intern Tyler remembers as a medical student. An attending Tyler vaguely recalls as interns when he was first diagnosed with epilepsy years ago. The only constant in this is his brain. He’s still Tyler. He’s still a patient.

People who enter his room without knocking first. Nurses who take his blood pressure, pulse and temperature, and it it’ll take Tyler less than three days to decide whom he likes best. The nurse who tells him with a smile that _his blood pressure is a little low, I’ll come back later to check up on you. be careful when you’re getting up, okay? I don’t want you to collapse_ and Tyler forces to smile back because he doesn’t need to be careful, his body usually collapses all on its own. 

The nurses who are empathetic enough to see past what other people project on his body. They’ll call him _Tyler, sweetheart or love_ , not the new patient, the one with the scars.

Nurses who huff when they see his arms. Who grab his hand to wriggle his arm through the cuff of the hand-held sphyg, ignoring Tyler’s wincing because they full on hit the IV cannula in the back of his hand. Nurses who make Tyler stay silent the next time. 

Doctors who come waltzing into the room. Doctors who wear their coat like amor while all Tyler has left is his skin and bones, rental at best and poor imitation of what was once a healthy body at worst. Immediately, Tyler can tell them apart. There’s the cowboy intern, barely out of med school and yet he’s acting as if he was the chief attending already, hiding his shyness and awkwardness behind medial lingo and a smug smile. The intern who simply can’t get an IV going and doesn't want to admit it. Instead, he starts poking the needle in his right arm no matter how many times Tyler tells them the veins are all tiny and blown there, you need to use the left arm, I’ve got a good vein there. But that intern doesn’t listen, he’s not really keen on taking Tyler’s advice and so he sticks the needle in impossible veins, veins Tyler knows won’t work and it’s only when even the last blood vessel has collapsed does he call the nurse to do it. 

There’s the attending who leans on the bedrails and peers down at Tyler as if he was his latest, big catch. The one who sees him as an interesting assemblage of symptoms and brings all his med students, interns and who else might be interested because who’s minding privacy at this point, right. _It’s not often we see these symptoms in combination. Interesting comorbidity indeed. When was the onset of the psychosis?_

There are med students so socially awkward it makes him feel almost proud as he thinks of _his_ social skills. 

And then there’s the attending Tyler knows, the one with the soft voice and the Harry Potter glasses. He has known for six years now, back when the attending was an intern and Tyler was a patient already, entirely new to the world of epilepsy. The one who knocks softly before he enters the room, who sees past Tyler’s history to what the most pressing concerns are. _Getting you well again, Tyler. That’s what we’re here for. We won't do anything against your wishes._

Cameras and microphones in the room. Three regular cameras, two for each bed, one in the middle of the room and an infra-red one for the night. Two microphones. All ready to record every move he makes and he’d rather not think about that right now because it’s only a leap from cameras to paranoia and delusion and from that only a heart beat to _fear fear fear._

Tyler pulls the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands, careful not to touch the IV cannula, his eyes focused on the ground. Just looking at the cannula on his hand stirs something in his mind, something dark, something that’s best left untouched, because the last time he had a needle in the back of his hand he was on the acute psych ward, barely making any sense and sedated out of his mind. The distant touch of a memory buried deep inside him makes his stomach knot with anxiety, and so he hides his hand, trying not to look at the IV and what it stands for this time. _It’s only for your safety, Tyler, in case things go wrong, okay?_ Which, in the world of epilepsy mean uncontrolled seizures that call for pharmaceutical intervention, which means Lorazepam or Diazepam or anything that switches your brain off, a substance that turns your thoughts into snow on rooftops, dripping away to watery nothingness. They’re leaking, dripping everywhere but you can’t feel a thing. A vast, white nothingness. You’re leaving no footprints as you slowly navigate the emptiness of your mind. 

  
He isn't ready for the isolation that makes itself felt in every corner of Tyler’s mind, in the room he’ll be spending the next two weeks in. Time that just won’t pass. He isn't ready for the loneliness that presses against the walls of his skull. A phone that blinks with unanswered messages and calls. _Mom. 5 missed calls. Dad. Zack. Mom._ And Brendon, Brendon who knows Tyler won’t talk and keeps him entertained anyway by sending him emojis and weird memes and videos of him driving and cursing at the traffic. _To keep things real, bro._

  
The long nights when he’s got to stay awake because lack of sleep is one of his epilepsy triggers (and for his psychosis too, but the neurologist in charge doesn’t know this yet). 

  
His brain is about to break and be mended, all over again, each time a little worse for the wear.

  
“Tyler, you need to show this to the doctors. Tyler, are you listening to me?”

  
Tyler blinks and nods, automatically. 

  
His mom sighs starts to take out a sheet of her handbag. “Okay, this is basically a CV I wrote for you” as if this was a job interview instead of yet another hospitalization, “it contains diagnoses, medications, and hospital admissions, all in chronological order.” _In case you forget_ , but she doesn’t need to say that, they both know Tyler doesn’t remember half of the medications he was on. Navigating his brain takes all his energy, there simply isn’t much left to spend on trying to remember what he was on, what didn’t work, what worked for a while and then stopped working, the one that was supposed to work but failed.

Tyler nods, without taking anything in. He stares at his hands hidden underneath his hoodie, it’s the yellow one this time. The one he’s been wearing for the last one and a half years, at least according to his mom. She doesn’t get it. No one does, what colors means when you’re forced to stare at white walls and a nondescript cheap hospital art for weeks on end. The prints don't vary, it's always a sunset or a flower or a shipwreck, stranded at a beach (the most depressing thing to look at, in his room at the psych ward, of all places.) This time, it’ll be a sunrise, again the beach, with cliffs in the background and clouds above. A reminder of the outside world, a world that loses a dimension when you look at it for too long.

Nowhere does he need more color than in the hospital, where the only drops of color are pale blue bed sheets and the 50 electrodes that are glued to your head and held in place with red tape. So it’s yellow, yellow, yellow, but no blue lights, not this time. No blue lights, not here, not now, but Tyler, waiting outsode of the hospital entrance for his mom to say goodbye, can’t commit to the mindfulness exercises his therapist recommended, to refocus, to stay in the moment, but he knows what he sung last night in the basement, past the point of sleep as panic consumed him, panic about the hospital, about his mind, about his previous admissions, about blue lights and ambulances and fear, fear, fear.

I won’t be afraid

( _It won’t be like the last time_ )

I won’t be afraid

( _There’s no ambulance to pick you up, no police_ ) 

I won’t be afraid

( _No one is coming for you_ )

I’ll live another day

( _Fear no more_ )

I’ll live another day

( _Fear no more_ ) 

I’ll live another day 

( _Fear no more_ )

“Tyler, I've got to run. Don't forget to call this evening, okay? And call if you need anything.“

  
Tyler nods numbly. He doesn’t turn back as the hospital doors swallow him hole, as the distant rush of the traffic continues and the trees wave their arms, calling him to come back, back back. He lets it all fade out to black as he enters the hospital, heart thumping wildly in his chest, hands tied firmly to his hoodie. He’s bracing himself for an invisible storm.


End file.
